Unearthed
by OhThatsWanky
Summary: In which paleontologist Santana names a dinosaur after Brittany. AU!Brittana fluff.
1. Unearthed

**A new hadrosaurid ornithopod from the Upper Cretaceous of North Dakota**  
Santana Lopez, Samuel Evans - University of Chicago

Cretaceous Research  
Volume 34, March 2012

**ABSTRACT**

Hadrosaurids are primarily herbivorous ornithopod dinosaurs of the Cretaceous. Here we report a new member of the ornithopoda clade Hadrosauridae from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota, based on a single, complete skeleton. The discovery of this animal, here named _Brittosaurus agilis_ gen. et sp. nov., adds to the known diversity of hadrosaurids in North America. _B. agilis_ can be identified by a unique configuration of lumbar vertebrae and pelvic girdle. Several additional features contribute to a combination of character states that serves to further distinguish _B. agilis_ from other taxa. Comparisons with other hadrosaurids suggest that _Brittosaurus_ was a uniquely agile and flexible ornithopod.

.x.

Santana Lopez nervously picked at the seam of her coffee cup. This symposium on body-size evolution and ecology was fascinating, it truly was, but she honestly didn't come to NAPC this year for anything other than one reason: to see Brittany S. Pierce, and the speaker, who Santana was sure was a very nice person, wasn't Brittany S. Pierce, nor was anyone else currently present in the room.

"If you keep doing that, it's going to leak," Sam whispered from his seat to her left.

She ignored him and tried to concentrate on the powerpoint slide on the screen, ominously titled "General Laws in Body Size". Brittany S. Pierce was somewhere in this convention center. If there were _n_ attendees at this conference, and _y_ number of sessions, what were the chances that they'd attend the same session given _z_, the average number of attendees in each session?

The door to the room opened and closed. Looks like someone was trying to sneak in late. Santana turned, expecting to see some frazzled grad student, but her eyes widened as her brain associated "beautiful" and "blonde" and "good God you're hot" with the sight of one Brittany S. Pierce, and the revelation coincided exactly with the feeling of something hot and liquid landing in her lap.

"Shit!" Santana grabbed every napkin within arm's reach and dabbed at the coffee on her slacks, ignoring the coughs and constipated looks from the Ivy League crowd at the table to the right.

"Told ya."

"Shut it, Trouty," she hissed as she stuffed the napkins into the leaking paper cup. "Did you see that? Brittany Pierce just came in."

"Oh? Is that who that was? I had no idea. Considering that you convinced me to let you name our fucking dinosaur after her."

Santana rolled her eyes. "You don't have to be sarcastic."

"Look, Santana. You've been pining over this girl for years now. Isn't it time to make a move?"

"Impossible. I have no game."

"We're all scientists here. None of us have any game."

Sam had a point. But when the speaker was finished and everyone was packing their laptops up to leave, Santana made a beeline for the door instead of stopping to talk with, or even look at, the woman she'd been dreaming about for years.

.x.

Three o'clock. Santana had made it almost the entire day without having to talk to Brittany Pierce, but damn if Brittany wasn't popping up everywhere: in sessions, in the hallways, at the poster display, in the line for coffee. Santana even checked for feet under the stalls just to make sure she was alone in the bathroom.

She berated herself as she washed her hands. "You're such a fucking chicken." She pulled a paper towel out of the dispenser and scrubbed at her hands viciously. "Chicken." She looked at herself in the mirror. "Talk to her. Just say hi," and for a shining moment she felt confident enough to go through with it. But then her usual chorus of insecurities piped up, joined by the extra voice of doubt that always chimed in when she thought of Brittany: _She's probably some combination of straight and taken. Isn't she engaged to that one guy? 'Brittosaurus' is probably the stupidest thing she's ever heard._

Santana tossed the paper towel into the trash.

.x.

Santana forgot she was speaking. No, she knew she was speaking but she'd neglected to make the connection that speaking meant her name was printed in the conference program, and when the entire UC Berkeley contingent — including one Brittany S. Pierce — showed up five minutes before she was scheduled to give her presentation, Santana knew she was trapped.

Thank God she'd been asked to present on the Hell Creek Formation itself and not on what she'd found there. It saved her from having to say "Brittosaurus" while its namesake sat less than twenty feet away. And thank God she'd given this presentation about a billion times before, because if she'd needed to think to present it she would have collapsed into a nervous wreck. The autopilot did just fine, thank you.

Once she was finished, however, the autopilot disengaged and she was back to her normal, nervous, has-no-game self. She packed up her laptop and tried to ignore the fact that everyone was leaving but Brittany Pierce hadn't moved a muscle, that Brittany Pierce was watching her every move like she was a new specimen being lifted from the earth.

As soon as they were alone in the room, Brittany stood up and walked closer, lean and graceful and powerful. "I really enjoyed your talk, Dr. Lopez. Hell Creek has a remarkable amount of paleobiological diversity."

"It's San—Santana." Great, now she was stuttering. Is that what prey did, on the African plains, when it realized it was being stalked by a cheetah? She stood frozen in place and twisted at her notes in her hands.

Brittany smiled. "All right, Santana. But why didn't you talk about your discovery?"

She knew exactly where this conversation was going. "It wasn't applicable to the topic at hand," she said guardedly.

"Okay, but I don't think anyone would have minded if you mentioned one of the most important discoveries made in North America in the past ten years." Brittany kept moving closer.

Santana couldn't help but peek at Brittany's hands. Fingernails short and neat. No rings. She blinked and forced herself to look up again. "I'm... not really that kind of person. The t—talk-myself-up kind."

"Why not? I would have loved to hear you talk yourself up — because unlike most people you can actually back it up."

A compliment. Brittany had just given her a compliment. She looked down at the shredded remnants of her notes and said nothing.

Brittany pressed on. "But I'm curious. Why'd you name it 'Brittosaurus'?"

"I..." This was it. She'd finally have to explain to Brittany Pierce why she'd named a dinosaur after her. But how could she explain _I think your work is brilliant_, or _You're the hottest woman I've ever seen_ or _I've been crushing on you ever since I saw you present at that conference in Geneva two years ago_. "I named it after someone important to me."

"Someone in your past?" Brittany was so close now that Santana could see the wet-denim blue of her eyes. "Or in your future?"

Santana looked down, suddenly terrified. _Chicken. Talk to her. Just say hi._ Two years to this moment. "Now," she whispered. "Right now."

Brittany grinned. "Have dinner with me tonight?"

God, yes. Absolutely. "I'd love to."


	2. The Untitled Prequel

"Brittosaurus."

"No. No way."

"Sam, please." Santana wasn't above begging if that's what it was going to take.

"There's no way I'm going to let you name the biggest find of our careers after some random person."

She had to make him understand. "She's not random, and this isn't the biggest find of our careers."

Sam looked at her blankly. "I'm not following."

"First, Brittany Pierce is not random. She's a finely engineered example of humanity. Second, this isn't the biggest find of our careers."

"Still not following that last part."

"We'll find another, Sam. And when we do, we'll find another after that. We're not the kind to sit on our asses after we finally hit it big."

"_You_ might not be that kind. The idea of relaxing in my office without any courses to teach on my schedule is looking really good right now."

Santana gave him a look, the same one she reserved for her wayward grad students.

"Okay, okay. You're right. Look, I know you're the primary author on this, but are you sure you want to name something this important after someone you don't really know?"

Santana was sure. She had the email in her inbox to prove it.

To: santanalopez -at- uchicago -dot- edu  
Subject: Fourier analysis of GPR data

_Dr. Lopez,_

_Your use of Fourier transforms to aid in the analysis of Ground Penetrating Radar data has intriguing implications for my own research. Would it be possible for me to run some ideas by you? I'd love to have your input on this._

Her email turned into a thread.

From: Santana Lopez _._._ Re: Fourier analysis of GPR data  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ Re: Re: Fourier analysis of GPR data  
From: Santana Lopez _._._ Re: Re: Re: Fourier analysis of GPR data  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ Re: Re: Re: Re: Fourier analysis of GPR data  
From: Santana Lopez _._._ Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fourier analysis of GPR data  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ damn it I'm changing the subject line already  
From: Santana Lopez _._._ Re: damn it I'm changing the subject line already  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ Re: Re: damn it I'm changing the subject line already  
From: Santana Lopez _._._ You change the subject line.  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ no you change it  
From: Santana Lopez _._._ stuff  
From: Brittany S. Pierce _._ Re: stuff

Aside from playing around with some subject lines, Santana was too intimidated to respond in a way that wasn't professional and on point. So the question she desperately wanted to ask — _"Hey, if you're going to NAPC, would you like to grab lunch sometime?"_ — went unasked, because if she didn't ask it, she wouldn't have to worry about being rejected.

Sam looked at her for a long time. "You've got your heart set on this, don't you?"

She was too embarrassed to say yes. Yes, she really wanted to name the biggest achievement of her career after someone she had a huge, raging crush on. Yes, a big part of the draw was Brittany's gigantic brain. Yes, the fact that Brittany was outrageously hot was a big part of it too. Yes, she occasionally daydreamed about doing science with Brittany. Okay, maybe more than just doing science, and maybe more than just occasionally, but still: Brittany was a worthy choice.

"Fine."

"What?"

He imitated the accent of a gallant knight, straight from the Round Table. "Name away, my lady. Make your heart content. But I get to name the next one."

"Deal," she said. And then she hugged him, suddenly and fiercely. "Even though you just agreed, I figured I'd still give you this." She fished around in her pocket and handed over a small slip of paper.

"What's this?"

"My ace in the hole." She grinned at his confusion. "It's Mercedes's phone number."

His eyes bugged out of his head. "Mercedes Jones?"

"I sure hope so, unless she's got a doppelganger running around the Music department."

He held the paper up to the light with reverence. "She sings like an angel."

"Then you better make it count."

.x.

A few weeks before NAPC, Sam came home from a date with Mercedes — a rather successful date, for that matter — cracked open his laptop, and fired off an email.

To: dinomike -at- berkeley -dot- edu  
Subject: NAPC?

_Hey Mike,_

_You guys are going to NAPC this year, right? If so, do you know if Brittany Pierce is going too? I'd like to speak with her and I was hoping you could make an intro for me._

_Let me know. Thanks,_  
_ Sam_


	3. Field Trip

The charter bus that would take Santana to the Upper Eocene period sat idling outside of the conference center. Despite the ungodly departure time, she arrived early, albeit with a cup of coffee in hand. Like the Magic School Bus or the Hogwarts Express, some things weren't meant to be missed.

She spotted Sam sitting in a window seat near the back of the bus, his face buried in his iPad, oblivious to the world, and she dropped into the seat directly behind him with the grace of a Titanosaur.

It worked, and he jerked up and hurriedly said, "Gotta go. Love you," and closed out of whatever it was he'd been doing.

She leaned over the back of his seat and invaded his space. "Were you FaceTiming with Mercedes?"

If he was, he wasn't telling. He clutched his iPad to his chest and gave her a look that had become very familiar ever since she'd given him Mercedes's phone number all those months ago.

"You totally were. Don't even try to deny it. You're wearing your goofy face." Said goofy face was the equivalent of a saccharine bomb, and it made him look ridiculously young. Like a baby trout. She watched impatiently as he swam in currents of love, until she waved a hand in front of his face and said, "Earth to Nemo."

He winced at the interruption. "What?"

"Isn't it a little early to be chatting up your lady love? Let the poor woman sleep in for once."

"She's an hour ahead of us, remember? And she's an early riser."

"Oh, I bet she is."

Sam scowled. "What are you getting at?"

"Nothing," she said innocently.

He opened his mouth to respond, but thought better of it. Then a wicked gleam lit within his eyes and he said, "Well, since you're the Lady Whisperer now, why don't you tell me how your dinner went last night."

It was Santana's turn to scowl. "It was terrible."

"Oh? Did she run away screaming?"

"No."

"Any mysterious phone calls that summoned her away due to an emergency?"

"No."

"Then what happened?"

"She was amazing. And I was a nervous fucking wreck."

"Don't tell me you spilled wine all over her."

"Close enough. I knocked over my water glass. And when the food showed up I was so nervous I couldn't eat." She sighed. "She was amazing." Amazing enough to make Santana repeat herself. "And I'm the biggest dork ever."

"That's not true," he said. "But you're really good at putting pressure on yourself."

He was right. But it was too late to help her now. "I think I blew it," she said softly, but he wasn't listening, instead looking at something out the window that'd caught his attention. She slumped back into her seat. Thinking of how she'd botched her dinner date with Brittany stung as fiercely as it had when she came back to her empty hotel room last night.

"You better start getting comfortable with using FaceTime yourself. Just saying," he said from out of nowhere.

That was highly doubtful. She dug her own iPad out of her bag and waved it to and fro. "All this thing is good for is turning pigs into bacon," she said darkly as she jabbed at an icon on the dash and fired up Angry Birds, a fitting analogue for her mood.

Soon enough she was beyond making bacon and well into producing the kind of prosciutto that came with the loftiest of high scores when a flash of blonde the perfect combination of sunlight and gold plopped into the empty seat beside her and said, "Is this seat taken?"

Brittany. Who hadn't run away screaming or arranged for a convenient cell-phone bailout. Brittany, right next to her, without a table between them, so close that Santana could catalog her shades: blue, pink, blonde. Blonde, a single word to describe such a wide array of colors, an inadequate word, a shortcoming of the English language that left it up to the beholder to try to come up with other words, better words to describe the impossible, and she'd written an embarrassing number of poetry fragments trying to do just that. And true to form, a word began to form at the back of her tongue — _lu..._ — but before it could come together, Brittany's expectant look knocked her clean off her runaway train of thought. "Now it is," she said.

Brittany smiled and nodded at the iPad. "What were you doing?"

She'd been just about to unleash black bird devastation, but admitting that was the last thing she wanted to do. She clutched the iPad to her chest. "Umm, nothing."

Brittany reached over and pushed against the edge of the iPad, lifting it away to reveal the image of an ill-tempered black bird frozen in mid-flight. "I love that game."

Santana's nerves jangled just as they had last night at dinner, and her first impulse was to play it down, to dismiss it as if it were nothing, but then she remembered the reason why she found Brittany so amazing: the ease in which Brittany inhabited her own skin, the way she navigated the world on her own terms, and instead of playing it down, or dismissing it out of hand, Santana smirked and said, "Oh yeah? Think you can beat this score?"

"I can't wait to try."

They had a two hour bus ride to find out.

.x.

Florissant, Colorado was the site of one of those happy accidents of science, where a lake, a redwood forest, and a volcanic eruption combined to preserve a spectacular snapshot of the Upper Eocene period. The Eocene wasn't Santana's specialty, nor were the botanical and invertebrate specimens the site had yielded over the years, but Santana never turned down a chance to look at some rocks.

They arrived in Florissant with morning to spare, though the results of the Angry Birds challenge remained vexingly inconclusive. The rest of the morning was spent hurtling from site to site, shepherded by their guides from the Colorado School of Mines.

Their current stop was a geological exposure that provided a striking glimpse of the area's stratigraphy. The layers of shale and mudstone told a story millions of years long, and they stood next to each other in silent contemplation.

Brittany stirred next to her. "When the mountains are overthrown and the seas uplifted, the universe at Florissant flings itself against a gnat and preserves it," she said.

"Did you get that from the plaque at the Visitor's Center?" Santana asked.

Brittany's cheeks pinked and she said, "Maybe," in a playful drawl.

"You have a good memory," Santana said, and she suddenly wanted to know just how good that memory was, if it was the kind that could last a lifetime of memories made by two.

"So do you." Brittany's eyes sparkled with the blue-on-blue of the Colorado sky, and her hair—

"Luxuriant." It slipped out before Santana could stop it.

"What did you say?"

Santana pinched her lips together.

"Did you just say 'luxuriant'?"

"Maybe."

"This shale stratum is lovely, but I'm not sure I'd describe it as 'luxuriant'."

Santana decided that it was impossible to die of embarrassment, because God was an evil dwarf who delighted in seeing her squirm and she couldn't squirm if she was dead. She looked down at the pumice mixed with the gravel underfoot. Was it too much to hope for a sudden case of suffosion within the bedrock below, just enough to open a sinkhole that would swallow her and save her at the same time?

Brittany moved closer. If the sinkhole opened up right now it would take the both of them. Santana swallowed and retracted her wish and looked straight into Brittany's eyes and said, "I was referring to your hair."

Was Brittany showing the beginnings of a smirk? "Go on."

Santana let the rest of it out in a rush. "And it occurred to me that you'd be a good candidate for the LFHCfS."

"The what?"

"The Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists." _And I'm a good candidate for the Biggest Dork in the Entire Universe._

Brittany threw her head back and laughed, easy and unforced and without a care to anyone else around them. "I'm already a member."

That was not what Santana expected to hear. "What? When?"

"A few years ago. Mike nominated me, said there weren't enough blondes." She reached out and tucked a stray lock of Santana's hair back in place. "You'd be a good candidate too, you know. There aren't nearly enough women. And you'd be a particularly beautiful addition to the membership."

Moments like this made Santana grateful that she was so good at stealth blushing, but that didn't stop her from being useless the rest of the day.

.x.

The bus lumbered up I-25 as the sun dipped behind the Front Range and cast long shadows over the lands on the flat side. The Angry Birds challenge part two had been declared a draw, and the iPad rested in Santana's lap, off and ignored. All that mattered to Santana at the moment was Brittany, who was fast asleep and using Santana's shoulder for a pillow.

Rustling in the seat in front of her made her look up just in time to see Sam pop up over the seat backs. He lifted his iPad so she could see its screen and silently pointed to an icon on the dash.

FaceTime.

She tilted her head so it rested against Brittany's and smiled.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Yes, the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists really exists! It's worth a Google search.


End file.
